Conversion Case Study: Kiva.org

We at ConversionVoodoo understand the importance of giving, which is why we donate time every month to help out some of our favorite non-profit organizations. Last month we finished a batch of testing for Kiva, a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunity around the world.

Our focus was on landing pages given to first time visitors, with the aim to increase signups (a $25 loan donation). As you can see the page is already pretty solid: enticing headline, clear call to action, and explanations of who, why, and how. We have a challenge on our hands!

Through a combination of user focus groups, brainstorming sessions, and a little voodoo magic, we identified a couple areas of improvement. We put our expert team of designers, copywriters, marketing gurus, and technical overachievers at work and came up with the following tests.

Improving above the fold

We designed 3 options to improve the main area above the fold: a plus version, a large slider, and a video.

This “plus version” is very similar to the baseline, but has just a few tweaks to see if we can keep with the current theme plus some elements. Here we added an explanation for how a loan can change a life, fixed some formatting, and auto-rotated the carousel (not generally a big fan of carousels).

The “large slider” version expands the carousel into a much bigger element. This aims to impact visual people who are influenced by graphics, pulling their focus in. The progress meter also hopes to reel in goal-oriented types that like to see actions completed.

The “video” version replaces the carousel entirely with a short 90 second video explaining how Kiva works. This aims to attract visual and auditory people who prefer movies over reading. The video auto-plays to start engagement immediately.

Answering questions

The focus groups taught us that people had questions. They were confused about how the money gets transferred, if they’ll see the impact of their loan, and particularly about if Kiva is a company they can trust.

Whenever people have fears, the best thing to do is address them directly. With this variation we included answers to common questions, testimonials from reputable sources, and statistics showing popularity. This aimed to convince visitors that Kiva is indeed an amazing company!

The results are in!

Not too surprisingly, the top area test didn’t prove to have any big winners. We noted some increases, but the statistics were not solid enough for us to declare confidently (we strive to avoid false positives). But the bottom area was a success. The variant showed a conversion rate increase of +11.5% at over 95% confidence.

What’s next?

The results told us that their visitors are intelligent users hungry for more information. We’re probably not going to get wins focusing on design or pretty graphics, but instead on informative, trustworthy elements. Our next round of tests will be sure to incorporate these findings as we continue to help out Kiva in every way we can!

Thanks to Kiva for allowing us to share these results (many of our clients like to keep their winners secret). Looking forward to many more rounds of testing!

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